WASHINGTON, Nov 7:The US Republican Party seems to be on shaky ground after Tuesday’s elections in four US states, but President Donald Trump still looks to be in a position to win his second four-year term in office 12 months from now, analysts told Sputnik.
In the election, Democratic candidate Andy Beshear defeated Matt Bevin, the incumbent governor of the state of Kentucky – a base of the Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. The Democrats also swept the quite populous state of Virginia but lost in Mississippi.
REPUBLICANS WEAK IN SUBURBS
Ivan Eland, the director of the Independent Institute’s Center for Peace and Freedom, told Sputnik that the election results showed the Republicans remained weak among scores of millions of middle-class suburban voters in towns and cities across the United States.
“The off-year elections indicate that Republicans still have a problem with suburban voters. This could be a drawback for them in 2020,” Eland said.
However, Tuesday’s results also indicated that the Democrats had made no significant progress in winning back the working-class white votes that unexpectedly flocked to Trump in his 2016 victory.
“On the other hand, the Democrats have not made many inroads into flipping the working-class voters in swing states needed to win the Electoral College,” the researcher said.
Both parties’ campaigns were likely to intensify their efforts to win over those two blocs of voters, Eland concluded.
MIXED RESULTS
Gerald Horne, a professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, agreed that Tuesday’s voting had produced mixed results.
“Yes, Trump and the [the Republican Party] lost big in Virginia and likely lost the Kentucky gubernatorial race but prevailed in Mississippi and down-ticket in Kentucky,” Horne told Sputnik.
Reports on most national opinion polls focused on Trump’s relative unpopularity but that emphasis was misleading, Horne cautioned.
“Trump is behind in 2020 national polls but doing well in Electoral College polls – the poll that matters,” the professor argued.
Next year’s election contest was therefore still wide open, Horne advised.
“Verdict? Too soon to predict intelligently 2020 victor,” Horne concluded.
Paolo von Schirach, the president of the Global Policy Institute think tank, who is also a chair of International Affairs at Bay Atlantic University, agreed that sweeping conclusions should not be drawn out of the mixed outcome of the state elections.
“Overall, the Republicans did not do well ? Still, it would be unwise to draw the conclusion that these elections signal a national mood favoring Democrats in the far more significant November 2020 national election,” von Schirach told Sputnik.
KENTUCKY REJECTION
Trump could not ignore his rejection in Kentucky, where he held a large pre-election rally on Monday, but failed to propel his supporter, Bevin, to re-election, von Schirach observed.
“Certainly, the defeat of Matt Bevin, the heavily pro-Trump incumbent in the Kentucky gubernatorial elections, even if only by a handful of votes, is a bad sign. Consider that Trump carried the state by 20 percent in 2016. This means that his wide margin has been eroded,” he said.
Von Schirach suggested that Virginia, once reliably Republican, had turned into a blue state, with the Democrats controlling both branches of the legislative power, beyond the governor’s mansion.
“Especially in Virginia, many voters declared that by voting for the Democrats they were sending a message to Washington: ‘We do not like Donald Trump,’” the analyst explained.
In these elections, many American voters signaled their dissatisfaction with Trump, von Schirach acknowledged.
“Local issues were obviously intertwined with national
concerns. It would be unwise to conclude that Trump and the Republicans are now a spent force,” the expert cautioned.
The presidential elections were still more than a full year away, von Schirach noted.
“This is like centuries in American politics. The Democrats have just started their nomination process. No primaries have been held. There is no obvious candidate for president,” he said.
Complacency on the part of the Democrats would be ill-advised, von Schirach warned.
TRUMP’S WINNING CARDS
“Trump has many winning cards, including a strong economy, low unemployment, a country at peace, a huge number of conservative judges appointed to the federal courts, plus a business-friendly climate created by deregulation and cuts to the corporate tax rate,” von Schirach continued.
Nevertheless, there were disturbing signs of an economic slowdown, while the trade war with China caused visible damage to the domestic economy, the analyst pointed out.
“If there is a recession in 2020 – an unlikely but not impossible development – then all bets are off,” he said.
Also, the impeachment process, which is now officially underway against the president, would be a huge distraction, making it more difficult for the Trump team to develop and communicate a strong political message for 2020, von Schirach suggested.
The researcher concluded that the Republicans were “on shaky ground” from a wider perspective.
(agencies)
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